posted at 12:31 pm on August 19, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

Via the Free Beacon, which notes that the hard-hitting editors at People have headlined the critical, breaking story of whether Jennifer Aniston would ever get married again as the top story in their print copy this week — although on their website, the top story is headlined, “Grant Show Marries Katherine LaNasa.” It’s a People Exclusive, just like the one the hard-news mag had with that guy who lives in the big mansion in Washington DC last week, who doesn’t warrant a front-page link now. As a measure of just how “equally important” the Aniston engagement is for public policy, it’s also the top story on Entertainment Tonight’s website, too, although they share it with the “equally important” news that Robert Pattinson — “RPatz” for those of us in the know — has unexpectedly resurfaced. Who would have expected a celebrity to do that?

So what will the White House press corps think of Stephanie Cutter’s observation that the RPatz and Aniston beats are “equally important” to their work of covering the leader of the free world? Think that will assuage their concern over getting ignored for the last few months? Er …

This is an awfully strange media strategy for a Democratic White House to take. It has already begun backfiring, as we’ve seen this week. I’m guessing that the tone is about to get considerably more hostile for Jay Carney starting Monday morning in the briefing room, and the explanations more tortuous than ever. And that means that this will get even more entertaining for Republicans than, er, the 7 Things We Learned About RPatz This Week. Meanwhile, the message from Stephanie Cutter (StefCutz) is clear: don’t expect the Celebrity in Chief to suddenly reappear at the White House, doing his job by engaging the reporters assigned to the White House beat.

Blowback

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Because in O’s head, Entertainment Tonight and People are two great places to perpetuate the War-on-Women meme. They will lap it up without question… whereas the WHPC might ask one or two softball questions.

You know what will happen: he’ll appear before the WHPC, flash his smile, they’ll all swoon, and he’ll close with some smarmy line about “this was fun; we should do it more often.”

It’s pathetic that they still gush over him, even when he treats them with utter distain.

This is the ego and thin-skinnedness of Team Obama at work. He’s like those on the left who think MSNBC is some sort of weak protector of the truth, because they allow Joe Scarborough and S.E. Cupp airtime during the week.

Obama himself can’t stand the idea that the non Fox News media isn’t 100 percent behind them 100 percent of the time, and childishly lashes out because someone like Jake Tapper gets a paycheck from ABC News. So if everyone can’t behave, nobody in the press corps gets cake and ice cream in Obama’s mind, while other other side Axelrod knows that there really isn’t much of anything the public sees as positive about what Obama’s done, and you just can’t count on the regular news media not to bring that up, even if they do it apologetically. Better to just allow the celebrity media to talk to the celebrity messiah, while the surrogates go to the regular outlets to trash Romney and Ryan.

‘If you’re not going to keep me on the altar and worship me every day — and aren’t going to do everything I tell you to do when I tell you to do it — then I just won’t speak to you and you just won’t see me around here anymore, baby. I’m just gonna hang out with your inbred cousins instead. They may be weirdos, but at least they still love me and aren’t afraid to show it.’

They’ll come running back with tears streaming down their cheeks begging for forgiveness and swearing a renewed vow of unwavering loyalty on bended knee any day now.

This must come as a shock to all those “serious” self-important left wing media types, like the ones who think reports about Seamus, Mitt’s high school antics, and Ann’s horses are important. Their hero thinks the fluffy celebrity news media is as important as they are. LOL.

If the press corps is not meeting with the President periodically, are they underemployed, unemployed, counted in those statistics? What do they do except sit around and wait for a press conference? They are all sitting around thinking, oh, he’ll be back, he loves us, I know he does. Sickness.

Things will keep going just like they have been. When it comes to Democrats, the press do just what their told to do. They’re nothing but stenographers. They’re liberals long before they’re journalist.

Stephanie Cutter, this is political malpractice of the worst order. You are lucky you have a near absolute right to practice politics in this country, guaranteed by the First Amendment, or you would be immediately disbarred from your profession.

The WH reporters for NYT and WaPo are reliable Democrats, I am sure. But you just compared them to People magazine. Where I come from, that’s a punchline.

And in Washington and New York, power journalists can’t afford to be thought of as punchlines…

Funny how these MSM lapdogs are all for Marxism and all it’s wonders – until it affects them.

If you don’t like being treated like you don’t matter in regards to getting interviews, how do you think you’re going to like it when you’re at the hospital with something serious going on? How do you think you’re going to like it when you’ve hit a point in your life that you decide to committ yourself to “getting ahead”, and then find out that whatever “extra” you thought you would be bringing home is not considered YOURS, because after all, “you didn’t build that”?

“Liberal” idiots.

It’s too bad so few people realize how incredibly lucky we are to live in the united states, and don’t do more to help protect it.

My guess is that Axelturf, during one of his rare moments resting in a hiding place safe from Jurassic Val, realized the following:
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1) BO has alway thought of himself as a rock star, and in fact can play only that role (so the campaign needs to run with it);
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2) People and Entertainment Tonight reach a much larger, and likely more sympathetic and less informed, audience than the NYT, WaPo, and the rest of the MSM …
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Truly, Axelturf is a genius …
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Their bet is that most people are so locked in to one side or the other. The people who are still undecided are the people that consider Hollywood gossip as “news”. The scary thing is that I’m not sure they are completely wrong.

We do have an advantage in enthusiasm which bodes well for turnout. I think they are fighting on 2 fronts. Base plays and demagouging to goose their turnout, and then entertainment shows and fm radio for the totally disengaged independents.

You get what you pay for, press corpse. Barry has a long history of throwing people under the bus. It’s your turn now. He doesn’t want to hear your pesky questions about serious things. He’s too busy getting re-elected to run the country. Where have you been?

But this is Washington – he’ll be back when he needs you to pander for him and you will slobber and grovel at his feet. All will be forgiven and again you will be doodling his name all over your notebooks, just like you did with your Junior High crush.

You could tell during Bush 43′s second term Tapper definitely enjoyed going after that president more than he does the present one. And if Romney wins in November, he’ll enjoy hectoring Mitt’s press secretary more than he does Jay Carney. But like I said; with Obama and his team, unless the media is 100 percent with them 100 percent of the time, they engage in Nixonian-levels of paranoia (and at least Nixon was right about the press hating him).

Tapper’s not a 100/100 guy — he’s probably closer to a 75/75 in terms of how he deals with this White House. But Principal Obama has decided if one kid in the White House press corps in talking out of turn and making things tough on inept substitute teacher Carney, nobody gets to go on the class trip to the Oval Office to interview the guy in charge.

Everything about the president’s campaign is based on having a very low opinion of the voter. From his choice of interviews to his belief that people are more interested in class resentment than tackling the long term fiscal issues we face. Sad thing is, he might be right. We’ll find out.

Hahaha, this should get good indeed. The only thing that can really drive journalists to aggressively question a Democratic-controlled White House is when the White House denigrates their role in the national dialogue professional. Comparing them to ET is particularly humiliating to all those journalists who consider themselves a couple of grades above the Hollywood gossip hacks.

Now the White House press corp is going to spend the next week grilling Carney and a presidential press conference. Ed’s right, this is going to be an entertaining week.

You know, folks, I have a confession to make. I’m not a fan of President Obama giving softball interviews to entertainment venues, but on the other hand, I must admit I’d really like to see him interviewed by Larry the Cable Guy so he’d have to answer questions like “Have you ever farted so hard it felt like you cracked your butt?”

don’t expect the Celebrity in Chief to suddenly reappear at the White House, doing his job by engaging the reporters assigned to the White House beat.

I don’t expect much from the Celebrity in Chief at all. He’s engaging with the people he’s most comfortable with, celebrities. It’s become quite clear the man never knew what his job was in the first place.